


Two Angry Elves

by reddish



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reddish/pseuds/reddish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zevran and Isabela are convinced that Fenris and Erina Tabris need to meet and bond over how much they hate... everything?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Angry Elves

_Zev,_

_I find myself in Kirkwall after a rather disappointing series of events after our time in Denerim. It is so drab and lifeless here that even the whorehouses are barely breathing. I am seeing to that, lest you fret._

_At any rate, I ran into a group of… acquaintances who have been filling my time with adventure and coin, and a bit too much do-gooding. One companion in particular reminds me of your Warden, Erina. Mine is an elf man who begrudges all mages their power over the elves from his land. Perhaps they should meet and stage a coup? Or perhaps a fuck would loosen them up?_

_I hope this letter finds you well in the arms of a lover or three. Send my best to Erina. Wait, she already received my best. Tell her to come find my best again should she ever feel the urge._

_Kisses,  
Isabela_

* * *

 

_Isabela,_

_My pirate queen driven ashore? My heart weeps for you. I know you are only truly free when open skies and ocean embrace you… though the legs of another do not hurt, ha!_

_Though you may find it difficult to believe, I am still in Denerim at our Warden’s side. She has taken up command of the Ferelden Wardens now that the Blight has ended. Although, when I read her your letter, she longed for you to rescue us both from this place. I believe she was being dramatic. I have taught her well, no?_

_A friend with whom to combat the forces of oppression would likely be well-received, but she has no time for such travels presently._

_I would visit and see this elf you speak of for myself, but I worry the price on my head may be too much for you to resist. My beautiful face would buy you a beautiful ship. Yet I must not stay still too long, so perhaps I will be in the area. If you must kill me, I only ask you do so after a night of passionate lovemaking._

_With a heart as swollen as my loins by the thought of you,  
Z_

* * *

 

_Z,_

_It has been a few years since I last wrote you – things have been rather harried in Kirkwall of late. Like you, I would prefer to be moving onward, yet a sense of responsibility keeps me moored in this harbor for reasons I cannot explain. Is this domestication? I thought I had so many years left._

_The elf I mentioned to you, Fenris, has grown no less surly.  However, he has become quite attached to a particular redheaded mage named Hawke, the leader of our ragtag group of adventurers. It seems even a night of unbridled passion is not enough to relieve his brooding, however. Or perhaps Hawke is simply no good. A pity, a beauty like that should not go to waste._

_Would that you could assist me in showing these straight-laced paragons of virtue what it really means to have some fun, hm?_

_Darling, I would never dream of killing you. I don’t wish to have all of the Grey Wardens in Ferelden swarming upon me like a wet dog in heat were my knives to stray to your tan, oiled flesh…_

_Thinking of you (when I’m alone),  
I_

* * *

 

_My swan of the seas,_

_I enjoyed my stopover in your town, and I appreciate the assistance of you and yours with my Crow problem. I also must offer my eternal gratitude for introducing me to the thunderstorm of a man that is your Fenris. I assume he is yours and Viona’s, given how he responded to my wooing attempts. Perhaps my charm has simply tarnished as I grow feeble and elderly. I am ready to end this life, were it so._

_I agree with your original assertion about this man: Erina must meet him. Though I make no guarantees as to his remaining yours should they meet. She is, as you may have noticed, rather enticing._

_If this letter finds you safe (I hear reports that Kirkwall is in yet another state of unrest, on which I congratulate your wicked efforts), I believe there is a time in the near future where we may need to be in the area. I have some “loose ends” to tie into a knot. Keep your eyes open for an individual hiring your swords to slay me, and there I shall be._

_Aching for you always,  
Z_

* * *

 

The tavern Erina in which found herself was surprisingly barren, given the depressing state of the town of Kirkwall. She expected everyone would be in need of a drink just to get through a day here. There weren’t even really any humans to harass, beyond the barkeep, which would be a terrible idea.

“Go to the bar and wait for me,” Erina muttered under her breath as she sank down at a table near the fireplace, affecting a (very poor) Antivan accent.

“New to the Hanged Man?” a nearby dwarf, the only other inhabitant of the place, directed his question to her.

“Unfortunately,” Erina sighed. “Why is this place so empty?”

The dwarf, a handsome barrel-chested man with a ponytail and a shirt that revealed a great deal of chest hair, laughed. “The Hanged Man is unpredictable. Give it time, I’m sure something interesting will walk through that door.”

As though on a cue, the front door swung open and Erina found her mouth suddenly missing its moisture.

“Close enough,” the dwarf snorted before taking the final swig of his ale.

A tall elven man with long white hair and tattoos on almost every inch of his revealed skin entered, wearing black and silver armor that fit close to his muscled, yet slender, form. His green eyes scanned the empty room, appearing as surprised as Erina was earlier. When his gaze settled onto the dwarf, his surprise became a single, beautiful eyebrow raised in skepticism.

“Varric,” a voice that sounded like the richest and darkest desserts Erina had ever tasted poured into her ears as it spilled out of the newcomer’s mouth. “What, exactly, am I doing here?”

“Oh, would you look at the time?” the dwarf, apparently named Varric, stood suddenly and holstered a gorgeous crossbow onto his leather-clad back. “I’m just passing through, Fenris. Sorry I can’t stay for a round or two, but maybe you should meet some new friends while you’re here.”

Varric winked, flipped a coin toward the bar which landed perfectly into a mug Erina assumed was for gratuities, and walked toward the exit.

Fenris watched the dwarf leave with a scowl on his face that made Erina begin sliding backward in her seat, seeking out shadows to hide in hopes she had not been noticed.

She had. She felt his eyes on her before she met them with her own, and as soon as their gazes locked she realized why she might know of him. Isabela had written Zevran a long time ago, and then…  

“Oh, you _fuckers,_ ” Erina groaned, lowering her head to her arm on the table.

“Pardon?” The surprised, short bark of a laugh in the question made Erina lift her head again, some color in her cheeks.

“Do you know a pirate woman with poor impulse control and beautiful, well, everything?”

Fenris tilted his head and narrowed his eyes as he approached the table. He looked almost ready to draw the enormous sword on his back at the mention of Isabela. “I do. Who are _you_?”

Erina raised both hands slowly and stood. “I’m Erina. Erina Tabris. The Grey Warden Commander of Ferelden. And I’m an acquaintance of Isabela’s.” She extended her hand to him in greetings.

“Ferelden?” He questioned, hesitantly shaking her hand. His hands were warm, but the cold talons of his gauntlets grazed her skin. She wasn’t rightly sure which made her shiver more.

“I’m here with my partner, Zevran. He’s…”

“In trouble with the Crows,” he completed the thought. “We just met one of their recruiters. Isabela convinced Viona to assist Zevran. I take it he and Isabela have a… history.”

“More than either of us probably know,” she shrugged.

“Then why are we here instead of helping them?” he asked gruffly.

Erina rolled her eyes. “Because they are meddlers. Do you want a drink? I could use a goblet of wine or three.”

Fenris shook his head, taking a seat. “You’re better off saving your coin. The swill here is dreadful.”

“They sent me to a _bad_ tavern?” Erina whined, sitting down across from Fenris.

Awkward silence ruled the air briefly. “I have seen the Deep Roads,” Fenris began. “Do you spend much time there, as a Grey Warden?”

“Oh, fuck no. That place is horrible. What kind of awful person dragged you down there?”

“The Champion of Kirkwall, Viona Hawke.”

Erina smirked. “We hero types are the worst to our friends, huh?”

“I would drink to that,” he growled, clearly reliving some memories of his own.

Silence descended upon them. Maybe it was the heat from the fireplace, or maybe it was just the beautiful green eyes staring her down from across the table, but Erina had no desire to end the conversation there.

“Are you from Kirkwall?”

His head shook in a short, precise negative. “I… it is complicated. Are you from Ferelden, originally?”

She raised an eyebrow, but let him deflect. This time. “Raised in the Alienage in Denerim. It… is much like the one you have here, except we were gated in at night. Yours appears to be open.”

“None would enter it willingly,” Fenris agreed.

“You’re not from this area,” Erina mused.

“No.” His (sculpted) jaw was clenched, and he glared past her into the fire for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “I escaped from Tevinter, but I was born in Seheron.”

“Seheron? The qunari island?”

“You know the kossith?”

“I traveled with a qunari named Sten during the Blight.”

“All stens are named Sten,” Fenris smirked.

“Wait, what?”

He shook his head, amusement in his eyes. “Never mind. Their ways are… not easy for outsiders to understand.”

“Clearly. I remember the argument we had about whether I was a woman.”

Fenris's eyes narrowed in an intense, studious gaze. "What could have caused any confusion there?"

Flustered and trying to pretend she wasn’t, Erina found herself making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “Oh, apparently women cannot be warriors, and since I was fighting the Darkspawn, we ran into a logical quandary.”

A breath of laughter escaped his terse lips, and he shrugged. “I appreciate their simple code, but it is, at times, unforgiving.”

“What about you?” Erina asked.

His brows became severe, questioning. “Am I unforgiving?”

“Not quite what I meant,” she said, finding her voice quieter, serious. “I just meant… you said you escaped Tevinter.”

“I did.”

“What were you escaping?”

Fenris’s eyes locked onto hers, and she felt like she was being simultaneously evaluated by both predator and prey.

“I was a slave.” The words fell out of his mouth like irons, cold, heavy, bitter. “To a magister.”

“Those are mage lords?”

“Yes,” he spat.

Chills crept down her arms. She couldn’t imagine what a power-hungry mage might do to a slave. She had seen the Circle Tower, where desperate mages had used their own for blood. She had released some of them, thinking they deserved a chance at freedom, but… what would a human mage with no restrictions and endless, non-human blood supply do?  Her own ran cold.

“Are all elves slaves in Tevinter?” Erina asked quietly.

Fenris had a small, cynical smile on his lips, belied by the frost in his eyes. “Everyone who is a non-mage is a slave in Tevinter. But, yes. With Seheron nearby, taken by qunari, many of us are displaced into the magisters’ foul hands.”

Erina sank into her chair, at a loss. “I’m… sorry,” she said lamely. “I spend a great deal of my time consumed in the injustices I’ve seen, but I just… I didn’t know.”

He shook his head. “I barely know, myself. I was a prized possession, but my value is in these markings.” He held his arm out on the table, showing her the tattoos that glowed ever so slightly on his skin. “But I barely remember much before I received them. Probably for the best.”

“There are things I wish I could forget.”

He glowered at her. “The pain of that process was so unbearable it destroyed the thoughts and memories I held from my previous life. You do not wish for that.”

“No, I’m not comparing our experiences. I can’t know what you’ve been through. I’m saying I understand, in a small way, why losing your memories could be the best and worst thing to happen to you.”

Fenris blinked. She saw surprise in the lift of his eyebrows and relief in the small twitch of tension leaving his lips. Had he been expecting a fight on that point?

“What happened to you?”

“It’s nothing,” Erina shrugged. “Compared to what you’ve been through.”

“You know,” Fenris urged, eyes searching her face. “You understand.”

Erina felt a blush on her cheeks, along with a twist of discomfort in her stomach as she thought back to her conscription into the Grey Wardens.

“The Alienage in Denerim often felt like living in a marketplace for the worst humanity had to offer,” she said. “They killed my mother when I was 14, claiming she had attempted to escape and attacked the guards. It felt as though a month could not go by without one of us being imprisoned or slain for the crime of existing. But… On my wedding day, a human noble’s son intruded onto our ceremony and… he took us. My cousin Shianni, my other cousin’s fiancée, other women in the wedding party. They had to take me unconscious; I tried to fight. But it wasn’t enough.”

“It never is,” Fenris’s agreement was gruff, not dismissive. “Not while they have the power.”

Erina stared over Fenris’s shoulder, drawn into her own memories. “The fucker raped my cousin, my dearest friend. And I’m sure she was not his first, and she would not be his last. And he tried to buy me off. He tried to give me money for Shianni, because that’s all we fucking are to them. I killed him, with the sword from his own guard.”

Fenris’s hands slid over Erina’s, and it was only then that she realized how tightly her hands were balled into fists on the table. She relaxed them slowly, shaking her head. 

“It’s not even really about that event,” she sighed, her vision resolving back onto his face. She felt foolish to be reliving traumas that paled in comparison to his.

His head gave another quick, short shake. “It’s not one moment. Every second is a new violation when you’re under the control of another.”

His words sank into her chest, their truth resonating in her tired spirit.

“People wonder why I’m so angry,” she laughed bitterly.

“People are fools,” Fenris smiled wryly at her, an expression she felt was not common.

“Why couldn’t you have run to Ferelden, about five years ago? I needed more reasonable people like you.”

He actually laughed. “Reasonable? I thought you’d be a better judge of character than that.”

“I fell in love with an assassin hired to kill me.”

“I… thought wrong.”

“Well, he mostly took the job so we’d kill him instead.”

Fenris cocked his head to the side. “So you fell in love with an idiot?”

Erina smiled. “You’ve met Zevran, then.”

“Only briefly before being sent here. He is,” Fenris paused, clearly searching for a kinder alternative for what he wanted to say. “Charming?”

“He must have made a move on you.”

“A few.” Fenris cleared his throat, running a hand through his hair. “Though Isabela seemed to be his target.”

“It was nice of him to leave me a chance with you,” Erina grinned.

Fenris’s cheeks darkened suddenly as a flustered cough rose from his chest. Erina put her hands over his. The cold metal of his armor felt like a sharp bite against her palms. She found herself wondering if he bit, too.

“You… said you liked wine?” Fenris asked.

“You offering?”

Fenris smirked. “I have some of the finest vintage from Tevinter at home. Would you, ah, join me?”

“To drink away the past?” Erina narrowed her eyes.

“To drink for the future,” Fenris offered.

* * *

“You live _here_?” Erina’s voice echoed off the cavernous stone walls.

“Hawke helped me kill a few of Danarius’s demons for it.”

“No wonder it’s so homey, then.”

Fenris’s laugh joined the echo as he ascended the stairs to the main landing. As Erina jogged to catch up to him, she was struck by how expansive, empty, and cold the building was. This was not a home, it was a mausoleum.

Her eyes settled onto Fenris when she reached the top of the staircase, a sadness sinking into her belly. He was beautiful, but he felt like a tomb. There was a living person inside his scars and walls, and the people around him were working to pull him out, but… he wasn’t there yet.

Fenris led her wordlessly into a sitting room. He pulled a bottle of wine off the table and handed it to Erina.

“Open it and I’ll light the fire.”

She obeyed, pouring a bit of the blood red wine into the glass as she felt a chill go through her. What the magisters in Tevinter got away with was criminal; someone had to pay.

Fenris stayed knelt beside the fire as it came slowly to life. He was staring far into the distance, as though struck by a distant memory.

“What were you expecting to find here?” he asked.

“I… don’t know,” Erina sighed, settling carefully onto a plush couch. “But I think I found it.”

“Oh?” he stood slowly, grabbing both goblets and carrying them to Erina’s seat.

As her fingers wrapped around the stem of the wine glass, they brushed against his. The wine in the glass betrayed the slightest jerk of his wrist in response to her touch.

“Hey,” Erina whispered, taking the glass from him. “Fenris, we’re not… we’re just having a drink, okay?”

His eyes narrowed, immediately suspicious. “Are we, then?”

“I’m not going to pounce on you. Will you sit?”

 Fenris sank onto the couch beside her, leaving comfortable, but not intimate, space between them. “I… am not used to beautiful strangers wanting only to _talk_.”

“You’re a suitable enough flatterer,” Erina smirked before taking a slow sip, letting the heavy wine glide down her throat. “Though one would pick that up after spending time with Isabela.”

“You have no idea,” Fenris groused, though there was a smile in his eyes.

“I have a few ideas,” she corrected.

“You… and Isabela?”

“Oh, yes.”

Fenris snorted into his glass as he took a slow drink. “Well, it seems Thedas is smaller than I assumed.”

“Isabela brings the world together,” Erina grinned. “And bless her for it.”

“I will drink to that.” Fenris held his glass to Erina, who followed his lead in the toast.

They sat in silence, watching the fire and letting its heat glide over them.

“Fenris,” Erina started. He made a sound of acknowledgment, and she continued. “I have skills and connections that could be used, should you ever have need of them. I may be based in Ferelden, but I travel often. If… if you need information on Danarius or… anything, I would offer my services to you.”

He took another drink, staring ahead.

“Why?” he asked quietly, slowly turning to look down at her.

“It’s not pity,” she cut him off at the pass. “I’m just damned tired of feeling helpless against the monsters that prey on us. No matter how much change I see, no matter how many demons I slay…if I can offer one more elf a night of peace, a head start against his enemies… I have to.”

Fenris’s eyes slipped closed and his head fell forward slowly. He let out a deeply-held sigh and set his glass aside. “I… do find myself in need of information. Though you owe me nothing.”

“Spill it.”

He kept his eyes closed. “I… need to know what became of my family. I’ve begun to remember some of my life before Danarius, but it’s all so brief. So… painful.” His eyes opened, fell on hers. “I need answers, Erina. Not relief, not hope, not comfort. Answers.”

Erina nodded, stuck on his gaze. “I will do my best. And I’ll be in touch as soon as I find anything. Once Zevran’s mess with the Crows is done here, we can set out immediately.”

Fenris crossed one leg over the other, subtly moving himself closer to her. She finished the last of the wine in her glass in a big gulp before setting it aside.

“Would you like some more?” Fenris asked, smirking.

“You’re a tease.”

“Isabela is a good teacher, hm?”

“I wonder what else she’s taught you.”

“You will keep wondering,” he said, the finality in his voice offering a polite and clear closure on that avenue.

“You’re damn right I will,” Erina smirked back. “More wine, please.”

* * *

 

Zevran pulled Isabela by the hand, using his free hand to motion for silence as they climbed the stairs in Fenris’s place.

“I hear nothing,” Isabela whispered in disappointment.

“Perhaps they have tired themselves out with passion,” Zevran said, still full of hope. “We left them for many hours.”

As they came within sight of the sitting room, both of them let out a deep sigh. Erina and Fenris were still on the couch, fully clothed. Erina had curled up with her head in Fenris’s lap; his hands were resting on her head and back. Both of them were asleep, the result of wine and good conversation.

“Alas,” Zevran sighed once they backed away from the doorway. “He _is_ beautiful.”

“Sublime,” Isabela agreed. “And Erina is looking fantastic.”

“As she ever did,” he beamed. “I suppose we find ourselves in possession of an evening to ourselves, then?” Zevran grinned up at his pirate queen.

“It seems I am in the position of having freed _you_ ,” Isabela purred.

“Oh-ho. Perhaps I shall have to find new ways to express my thanks?”

“Mmm,” she made an appreciative sound, deep in her throat. “I do so love when you visit me.”

“My body yearns for you whenever we are apart, my sweet.”

Isabela tugged on his hand. “You keep talking like that, the job will be half done before we even get back to the tavern.”

“With you? You are not halfway done until my lips ache and your whole body tastes of our sweat.”

Isabela laughed loudly as the door closed behind them, leaving their partners to their well-earned rest.


End file.
